


in this time of fear

by Koraki



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Alternate Universe - Car Racing, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Character Study, Developing Relationship, F/F, Fluffy Ending, supportive Asami
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 17:16:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2781311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Koraki/pseuds/Koraki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Korra doesn't know what to do with herself after the crash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in this time of fear

**Author's Note:**

> My Korrasami Secret Santa present for korrasamifics on tumblr!
> 
> This turned out to be more of a Korra character study than anything, with budding Korrasami at the end. Hope that's alright.

Thinking about Asami was kind of scary at first, after the crash. 

It didn’t make sense.

Her idea of Mako’s reaction should’ve felt way scarier – worry, trying to mask itself in smothering disapproval with limited success, filling the room and pressing in against her so that she had to fight for breath, almost worse than how she’d panicked those first few minutes after opening her eyes to the hospital last week. Even Bolin, the way she pictured him, shifting between frantic emotion and that lethargic sad depression, should’ve been more intimidating. Honestly Korra didn’t want to be _afraid_ of anybody, but if it was going to be like this she couldn’t see why Asami was coming off so much worse to whatever it was in her subconscious. 

With a groan Korra tried to roll over onto her stomach, ready to bury her face in the mattress and pull the flat hospital pillow over and sleep off the crazy. The IV hampered her movement. Teeth gritted, Korra tugged at the sheet, trying without much success. Obviously yanking on it wasn’t gonna make the thing any longer. Korra gave up. No point trying to sleep in this bright white room, anyways; lights wouldn’t be going out for hours. 

Somebody had brought in a few random books and magazines. They lay by the bed just within reach. At least turning her head didn’t take much effort. Korra regarded the pile without much interest. She wasn’t really one for reading, and focusing on anything was way too hard right now. Still she wished there was something, anything else to do here. A few days of nonstop TV had made her about a hundred percent sure her brain was starting to melt and drip out her ears.

Instead Korra closed her eyes and tried to think. For a while after waking up from the crash she’d thought she would go crazy with the way frantic random thoughts swam in and out of her head with no meaning. Then silence had slipped in one day like a cloud, muting the fear, shutting out the desperate feeling of not knowing what to do. Unconsciously her hands clenched into fists. That wasn’t what she wanted to think about. Not now and probably not ever.

Taking a breath, she tried to relax, but that was hard. So she thought about karting instead, back in high school, where she met them all in the first place. Bolin with his awkward sincerity and Mako with his concerned micromanagement and Asami, who probably could’ve kicked everyone’s asses in a race but always hung out in the pit for some reason. None of them knew she existed for a while because of that. They had been teaming up for practice and everything for months before bumping into Asami after one of the few races she’d participated in. Not much later she joined the friend group as a sort of token unofficial mechanic, and of course around then was when they found out who exactly she was.

Things had been weird for a while after that. Hiroshi Sato was a pretty well-known sponsor in the world of racing – he’d never been a driver himself, though it was common knowledge that his wife had died on the track – and that just made their friendship with Asami seem weird and fake and almost like cheating to Korra in a way she couldn’t really describe, but that had really bothered her. Mako and Bolin never said whether or not they felt the same, but she sensed the same kind of strained tension between them and Asami that she had, and guessed they could feel her doubtfulness too. Still, they’d all stuck together like friends do, and managed to break through into real racing with some help from Hiroshi, which none of them thought they’d earned but which they accepted anyways.

Then everything had come crashing down. Over the next couple of years it’d become clear that this first crash-down, while scary, was definitely not the last – no way. Still, the first time anything had gone seriously wrong had been the worst in a way, because none of them had been expecting it. Hiroshi had gotten into some serious legal trouble over how one branch of his company had been doing business. He got a pretty stiff fine but the jail time was what threw everybody off, especially Asami. She acted normal enough, but Korra guessed that couldn’t be easy to go through, and adding her mom’s death into everything just made it worse. Weirdly – or maybe not so weirdly – feeling sorry for Asami had brought her down off the pretty-rich-girl pedestal Korra’d been seeing her standing on, and the team had gotten way closer afterwards.

Being friends with Asami was…different. Shifting in the bed, Korra opened her eyes and squinted up at the glaringly white ceiling. Being homeschooled, she hadn’t had a ton of good friends that she saw on a regular basis. The people she was closest to were always the guys and girls on her sports teams until she’d gotten into karting, later on, and of course there were a ton of guys who did that but not so many girls. Sometimes Korra wondered if maybe she just didn’t _get_ other girls, like friends, and then she remembered that was stupid because girls were just people like everyone else, but not knowing any other girls made it kinda hard to always remember that. And girls could be so pretty. Pretty girls were more intimidating than any race.

Still, through a series of weird circumstances, she’d ended up hanging out with Asami more and more often, and that turned out to be surprisingly fun. Asami was really serious, in a different way than Mako; she was enthusiastic too though, and had this insane passion for cars. Korra had always loved driving, revving engines in her blood – Asami loved cars themselves, like some kind of super-specialized gearhead. That had given them a lot to talk about and just connect on. 

And now what?

She could hardly bring herself to admit it, there in the sterile room smelling of cleaning products and nothingness, but Korra felt _disconnected_. Not just from Asami – from Mako and Bolin too, from her dad who’d come to try and talk earlier, from the whole outside world, and, most crushingly, from racing. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to think about any of that; she couldn’t think. Maybe that soft gray cloudy darkness that had descended behind the fear was going to stay forever. Some part of her rebelled against the thought. Indifference settled heavy on her chest, fogging her lungs and thoughts and eyes. Why bother?

Why bother? As the thought slipped from her mind others rose up behind it. Why care? Why even crash at all? Why did anything even matter now? Why so afraid of Asami, if nothing mattered?

Whoa whoa whoa. “I’m not afraid of Asami,” Korra said aloud, defiant. “She’s my friend. That’s something screwed up in my subconscious or whatever it is, not me.”

So then – why not see her?

“I don’t want to see anyone.” Korra sighed and looked to the side, resting her cheek on the pillow, which was so flat that flopping around helped nothing. “Not even Dad.”

Why?

“I’m useless now.” The statement rang uneasily in the empty room. Well, it was true.

So why is there anything left to be afraid of?

“I’m not _afraid_ of anything!” Korra tried to sit up and lash out at – nothing, really. Not that sitting up worked for her. The doctor had said full mobility shouldn’t be expected until months of physical therapy had gone by, if ever. 

Although it was a good question. Korra hated all that introspective feelsy stuff, which wasn’t great at the moment since feelsy stuff could have been a real help in this case. “Why does anybody’s subconscious do weird things?” she muttered, running a hand through her hair. “Asami’s so good at everything. She takes all these random gears and batteries and computer programs and – I don’t know – and then she just _makes_ things just like that. And she goes around in her perfect clothes. She’s just so perfect. And I’m so…” Korra scowled. “I mean, I fuck things up. I used to be a great driver but now who knows?” She shrugged, and the cords and tubes and other apparatus attached to her moved in sync, as though to drive home the point.

Asami put everything together. Korra was broken, and she didn’t know if she wanted to be put together again, now or ever. 

The room was quiet for what seemed like a long time, and still the bright clinical whiteness of it all bled into Korra’s head and made her mind a hard place for thoughts to thrive.

“Maybe I should talk to her.” The statement fell upon the silence with the finality and gracelessness of a sudden crash on the track. Tenzin had been a good coach, teaching way more than just the technical side of driving, and he’d always encouraged Korra to face what she was afraid of. This was just her friend, too. Nothing even worth being nervous about.

As usual the lights turned on earlier than Korra would have preferred the next morning. She picked at her breakfast, though that was normal for her nowadays, and spent a good few hours staring off into space, lost in the fog. Yesterday’s bout of thinking had felt like an intense workout, and her mind wanted to shrink back and hide, which made Korra uneasy. For a moment she considered mentioning the darkness to one of the nurses but indifference swelled up to consume the thought before much could come of it.

Absorbed in nothingness, Korra didn’t notice at first when Asami knocked on the door, but that firm persistent rhythm broke into the monotony after a few seconds. “Come in,” Korra called, not remembering yesterday’s resolution until after she’d spoken. Probably that was good.

Asami entered silently, closing the door carefully behind her. Settling onto a chair beside the bed, she tucked a long strand of hair back behind her ear with that way she had and, half-smiling, said, “Hey.”

“Uh…hi.” Korra made an attempt at a smile but it fell flat and crumpled off her face. That was too fake to pull off.

Eyes softening with concern, or maybe pity, Asami leaned forward and placed a hand on Korra’s shoulder, graceful and feather-light. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay.” Something about the look in her friend’s eyes sparked a bit of genuine feeling somewhere in Korra, and a tiny smile flickered across her face in spite of everything. Asami smiled in response, and they sat there for a minute just looking at each other.

“Are you angry with us?” Asami asked suddenly, with no preamble. Her voice wasn’t accusing, just sad. A little bit wistful.

“No!” Korra was shocked that Asami would think that; then she realized, with a twisting sensation of guilt, that it was a logical conclusion to draw from the way she’d been shutting everyone out. Then she wondered why all these feelings were surging up in confusion, all together, after a week of silence.

Raising an eyebrow quizzically, Asami leaned towards Korra and took her hand, smooth, easy. “Then is everything okay?” she asked, sounding concerned. “This isn’t like you.”

Korra squeezed Asami’s hand, not replying for a second. Putting this into words was difficult and she wasn’t sure how much she was ready to say yet. “I don’t know,” she finally said, honestly. “Things are kind of weird right now.” That didn’t even begin to describe everything going on in her mind, but it was true.

There was a moment of silence.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” said Asami, sitting back, still holding Korra’s hand safe within her own. “I’ll be here if you do. Unless you’d rather I left – dealing with all of us on top of the crash must be pretty hard on you.” Her grasp on Korra’s hand loosened almost regretfully.

“No!” Again Korra sat up as far as she was able, checked by the apparatus around her. Asami blinked, eyes darkening with concern. Korra exhaled, sinking back onto the flat pillow. “It’s fine. You can stay. I need to start talking to you guys again.” She turned her head to the side toward Asami, searching the other girl’s face for some kind of answer. “Just please don’t leave yet.”

For a while after that, the room was silent except for the sound of their quiet breathing. Korra looked down, eyes shifting from Asami’s face to the hand that held her own so firmly, but so gently. She felt safe. Why had she ever been afraid to see Asami?

“I was scared to talk to you.” Korra broke the silence, unfamiliar uncertainty shaking her voice. “I don’t know why.” She took a breath. “I’m…sorry.” 

“That’s not your fault,” Asami said quietly after a moment. Leaning forward, she touched Korra’s cheek with her free hand and looked her in the eyes steadily. “People deal with this kind of thing in different ways. I – “ Asami’s voice faltered for a second and she glanced away. “I hate to admit it, but I was really angry at all of you for a while, after what happened with my dad.”

Shocked, Korra stared back at the other girl. “What? You never acted like you were angry.” She shifted in her bed. “Why didn’t you talk to one of us?”

“Well…” Brushing a stray strand of hair from Korra’s forehead, Asami smiled. “For the same reason you haven’t felt like seeing us yet, I guess. I wanted to deal with my feelings on my own and didn’t really think I was ready to open up to someone else like that.”

“But…I didn’t open up.” Korra drooped, gaze falling from Asami’s face to the wrinkled sheets that covered her. “ _You_ came here. I was trying to keep you away.”

Now Asami’s fingers asked a question of her face, asked her with the slightest pressure against her jaw to look up into Asami’s face again, and slowly Korra did. Although the smile on her lips had faded, the other girl’s green eyes brimmed with a quiet happiness. “I came here,” she agreed quietly, breath soft against Korra’s cheek. “But you chose to let me in.”

As their lips met, Korra felt the haze of sorrow begin to lighten.


End file.
